Phantom Limbs and Illusions of Relief – What does this have to do with the Law of Attraction?

I am always interested in stories that combine science and psychology.

The following appeared in the National Post on Saturday, August 28, 2010 in an article entitled Phantom limbs and illusions of relief;

“In piecing together its impression of the surrounding world, the human brain has a tendency to give priority to vision”, said Terry Borsook, PhD candidate in psychology at the University of Toronto. “What the brain sees, it will believe,” he said.

That preference opens the possibility of tricking the brain, or using illusions to relieve certain kinds of pain, from common arthritis to the rare pain in the “phantom limbs” of amputees.

Mr. Borsook describes “mirror therapy,” in which a patient with phantom limb pain lays their in-tact limb on a mirror and moves it around, while looking at the reflection and imagining it is the amputated one.

By bolstering the imagination’s ability to create its own internal reality with the mirror’s visual feedback, Mr. Borsook said this creates the “uncanny impression” that the severed limb is resurrected, and feels fine.

“That’s the magic.”

It does seem magical, and I can understand why the author would choose to use this word. Creating through the use of your imagination can be an incredibly joyous/magical experience.

In the creation of everything that exists, thought always comes first. Everything that you see around you was once a thought or an idea, that the Law of Attraction matched – a vibrational concept that matured into what we call physical reality. Phantom limb pain – if you bolster your imagination to create a different reality, a different thought, the pain goes away. Here is the best news – this concept of thought first, reality following, can work in any area of your life, your body and the way it looks and functions, your relationships, your career etc.

Borsook goes on to describe current experiments on arthritis patients, in which the key step is getting them to attribute their pain to a cause that can be manipulated. To that end, he uses an “augmented reality” system, which is similar to virtual reality except that it uses real-life as a backdrop. The arthritis patient watches a live video of himself, on which flames have been super-imposed on his painful joints. Once that association is made, the flames are virtually douses, and the patient feels relief. “We’re assisting the person’s imagination” he said.

What are you imagining? Why not assist it? Think about it.

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First Day of School Blues - Who is the Teacher and who is the Student?

"Mom, your talking that funny spiritual stuff again", my 9 year old daughter replies rolling her eyes.

As a certified Law of Attraction trainer, I admit trying to infuse our conversations with the occasional words of wisdom hoping that some of it might sink in. "If only she could learn at an early age what I have come to understand as an adult, wouldn't that be wonderful", I think.

We talk about the importance of visualizing, focusing on what you want rather than on what you don't want, and that she is the creator of her world. I wonder how much she absorbs, whether it is making any sense to her, and then the first day of school hits.

She doesn't get the teacher she wanted, and more importantly, NONE of her friends are in her class. In tears she hugs her father and I pleading that we don't make her go and to take her back home with us. Our hearts are breaking as we tell her she must go, and send her off.

Shall I let her figure this out herself, or should I intervene? As parents, haven't we all asked ourselves this question?

I try to teach my daughter, what I myself continue to work on, that is that you can't control the environment around you. The only thing we have control over is the thoughts we think, and more importantly how we feel about what we think. But, the mother bear in me takes over, and I place a call to the school to see if any changes can be made.

To make a long story short, my daughter was given the option to move to the class with her friends, but when presented with this option replied, "when I first got to school I was focused on who wasn't in my class, now I am focused on who is in my class, and I like it here and I want to stay". At the end of day I picked up a happy, smiling girl.

She was able to take what appeared to be an awful situation and turn it into a good one, and she did this by looking for things that would make her happy, rather than things that would make her sad. What a proud mother I am.

Who is the teacher and who is the student?